


all the pretty girls in the world

by mutterandmumble



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Banter, Crushes, Explicit Language, F/F, Fluff, Humor, Late Night Conversations, Not Canon Compliant, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Rarepair, unedited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:42:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24833278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutterandmumble/pseuds/mutterandmumble
Summary: “I mean it’s cool, it’s cool,” Yui says, and it’s not the best thing that she could have said, but it’s the best she can manage at the moment. Half her hair is knotted around the fingers of her left hand. The clock on the oven is blinking a sickly lime green, and she looks all washed out because the only light on is the one above the sink and the whole rest of the kitchen is an ugly fuzzy gray because the light above the sink isn’t very strong. How does she salvage this? How does she look cool in front of pretty girls, especially pretty girls likeShimizu Kiyoko, especially pretty girls likeShimizu Kiyokowhen it’s late and she‘s tired and the light above the sink seems intent on making her look like a ghost?
Relationships: Michimiya Yui/Shimizu Kiyoko
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	all the pretty girls in the world

**Author's Note:**

> Title from honey by kehlani
> 
> Anyways, this is largely unedited and a little rushed (and the less said on the pacing the better) but that fits the vibe of it so it all works out I guess. Besides, I love kiyoyui. They’re cute

The thing about writing an essay the night before it’s due is that it  _ seems _ like a good idea right up until it  _ doesn’t _ . And the thing about an essay that was assigned in your favorite class by your favorite professor is that it  _ seems  _ like an easy thing to write, something that you could put off for a bit and still get a decent grade on without sacrificing what little free time you have (because how hard can an essay in your  _ favorite  _ class from your  _ favorite  _ professor be), right up until it’s two in the morning and you're stumbling down the halls to your dorm’s communal kitchen in a half-asleep daze because that essay still has got three thousand words to go and no conclusion to speak of. That’s where Yui is now; halfway down the hall and about three-fourths of the way through that  _ stupid, stupid  _ essay that her professor assigned, the one about politics or history or something like that. She’s not exactly sure because once she’d actually started to  _ write  _ it, she’d found the prompt to be horrifically ambiguous, open-ended enough to make her head spin and her stomach turn and what little proficiency she’d had in the subject fly straight out the window never to be seen again.

And as frustration does not for decent essays make, she’s taking a break. A productive one, mind you- first she’s going to get herself some coffee (that with any luck will give her the last bit of energy she’ll need to finish her work), and then she’s going to take three deep breaths, and she’s going to collect herself and she’s going to sit down and she’s going to get things _done_. She has a plan. This is going to work. She is _not_ going to have to lecture herself about the relative evils of procrastination in the bathroom mirror tomorrow morning, she is _not,_ she is _not._

She is  _ not. _

It’s quiet in the dorms at this hour, the air stiff and still and gray in the way early-morning air is. Someone must have cleaned up because the floors are flat and static and lacking in any sort of personality. Yui thoroughly decimates what little peace the place sees when she bursts from the hallway looking like someone’s estranged wife from an old gothic novel, her shirt a bright blinding white and her eyes glazed and her hair puffed in a halo around her head. She’s quite alright with that because there is no better time for gothic-style dramatics than two in the morning- except for maybe three in the morning, but she plans to be asleep by then so this will have to do- and while she’s usually much too cheery for that sort of look she _does_ love the feel of it, especially when she’s one good scare and a strong gust of wind away from dropping dead. She likes it when all the aesthetics she’s embodying line up into rows. They’re easier to keep track of like that.

That said, and aesthetics aside, she’s got a break to take and then work to do, and she’d like to get that work done as soon as possible. So she keeps on towards the kitchen, passing through the common room without incident (she doesn’t even stub her toe on the coffee table that they all hate because it’s short and squat and for some reason  _ very, very  _ prone to stubbing toes) and five minutes later she’s closing cabinet doors as quietly as she can, firing up the coffee machine, and then just sitting for a moment with her head in her hands because holy  _ fuck _ . 

It’s pretty nice, actually. Quiet like a break should be. The room is filled with a heavy sort of silence, broken only by the soft gurgle of the coffee machine and Yui’s own idle noises, and she feels very safe and alone at the moment and blames  _ that  _ false sense of security (she really should know better by now, should have been more alert and less at ease, what a  _ rookie  _ mistake) for what happens next.

“Yui?” someone says from behind her, and immediately Yui’s head shoots up and she whips around, stumbling backwards and flailing every which way as one hand buries itself in her hair and the other slaps against the counter with one big  _ bang _ . Not the most graceful response for an athlete, especially not one whose sport hinges on perception, but in her defense she’d been preoccupied and it’s  _ two  _ in the _ fucking _ morning _. _

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you,” the person behind her continues, and once Yui’s completed her sloppy turn around and freak-out combo (two for one sale! For the low price of your dignity, you too can embarrass yourself beyond repair!) and her heart’s beat near out of her chest, she sees a mess of black hair and then the startled, gorgeous face of her best friend (that she may be a  _ tiny  _ bit in love with), and she’s immediately horrified. This is great- this is exactly what she needs. A wake up call. Something that says in no uncertain terms  _ hey dumbass, if you had just done your work you would be asleep right now and wouldn’t be making a fucking fool of yourself in front of the girl you’ve liked for forever, so how do you like that, huh? Have you learned your lesson? Have you? _

No she hasn’t. Because now she’s been quietly panicking for way too long and she’s gotta say something fast, because the only thing worse than making a fool of herself in front of the girl she likes is completely  _ ignoring  _ the girl she likes in favor of a half-assed existential crisis.

”It’s alright!” she squeaks first, but that doesn’t sound convincing at  _ all  _ and she’s gotta look cool in front of the pretty girl, so she lowers her voice a half step, does that thing with her face where she takes all the fright and surprise and sweeps it back behind her eyes, and then she keeps right on going.

“I mean it’s cool, it’s cool,” she says, and it’s not the _best_ thing that she could have said, but it’s the best she can manage at the moment. Half her hair is knotted around the fingers of her left hand. The clock on the oven is blinking a sickly lime green, and she looks all washed out because the only light on is the one above the sink and the whole rest of the kitchen is an ugly fuzzy gray because the light above the sink isn’t very strong. How does she salvage this? How does she look cool in front of pretty girls, especially pretty girls like _Shimizu Kiyoko_ , especially pretty girls like _Shimizu Kiyoko_ when it’s late and she‘s tired and the light above the sink seems intent on making her look like a fucking ghost?

“If you’re sure,” Kiyoko says, but she still looks apologetic. Oh well. Can’t win them all. Yui can cut her losses for now and recuperate later, when she’s alone in her room and surrounded by a number of pillows perfect for screaming into. “And I really am very sorry to disturb you, but may I come in?”

Oh  _ god. _

“Yes! Yeah! Of course! I'm just-” Yui makes a gesture at the coffee machine that is far too enthusiastic. It makes a soft rumbly noise and she laughs, one short  _ HA  _ out through her nose that’s sharp and short and not at all natural. “Making coffee. Living life. Loving it. You know how it is.”

Oh no, oh no, oh  _ no _ . There is nothing cool about that. Come on Yui, come on _.  _

“You’re braver than I am,” Kiyoko says, voice thick with the remnants of a good night’s sleep as she makes her way into the kitchen. Her movements are slow, careful and just the slightest bit uncoordinated- she looks like she might lie down right there on the floor and pass out until morning. “I’m making myself some tea. If I had coffee now-” she stops, running her hands up and down her arms. “If I had coffee now I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep and then tomorrow would be a  _ nightmare _ . I don’t know how you do it.”

She doesn’t. Yui is dying a short and miserable death at the hands of their flawed educational system. 

“You know. I just. Do. You know,” she says instead. She does not elaborate. Kiyoko stares at her for a good long moment. Then a small, sleepy smile crawls over her face and she giggles, eyes scrunching and head ducking down to her chest, and Yui’s lost it so many times by this point that she’s practically immune. Fuck it. Maybe Kiyoko can see the way that she’s blushing, maybe she can’t. Maybe Yui will die here, maybe she won’t. Either way her coffee’s done and god knows she could use a win, so she takes her mug out from beneath the machine and holds it in her hands and thinks that it is very, very hot and that kinda, sorta sucks.

“I’m afraid I don’t _,_ ” Kiyoko tells her, all in good humor and stifling a yawn. She’s right next to Yui now, opening up the big cabinet with its twenty-something mugs, and the thing about Kiyoko is that she’s so put-together most of the time that there’s something unspeakably intimate about seeing her when she’s half-asleep and hiding yet another yawn behind her hand, wearing a pair of purple plaid pajama shorts and a baby blue t-shirt that has a hole in the hem. Her fingers are drumming against the shelf and they’re thin and pale, whittled to blunt nails and looking like nothing more than vague, shadowy shapes in the gray of the kitchen. They move fast and fluttery, light like the wings of a bird, and the part of Yui’s brain that is always waxing on about how _pretty_ and _smart_ and _funny_ Kiyoko is dies right there and then and then resurrects itself just to watch a little longer. 

“That’s fine. It’s late. Nothing makes sense when it’s late,” Yui says, only half in her head. It’s not like she  _ could  _ say anything to Kiyoko about how she feels anyways, even if she wanted to. It’s too soon, they’re too close, she’s too nervous. So she takes a sip from her too-hot coffee, burns her tongue, and does not look at the way Kiyoko’s hair is coming loose from its bun. “Did you just wake up?”

“I did,” Kiyoko tells her, settling on a plain mug. It has a chip in the rim and was once bright green but has been worn and weathered down to a dull brown. “For no real reason either. My brain just decided it was time, I suppose.”

“I hate it when that happens,” Yui says, because she does and transparency is important unless that transparency is relating to a longstanding and hopeless crush on her best friend, in which case she is as opaque and lifeless as a brick wall. 

“Me too, me too,” Kiyoko sighs. She puffs out her cheeks in quiet indignation. “It’s always much more trouble to get back to sleep a second time, isn’t it?”

Yui gives a hum of assent, and Kiyoko gives a  _ that’s what I thought  _ nod before starting on her tea. Yui keeps her eyes fixed firmly on her hands and does not understand anything at all about what’s happening because she does not know how to make tea. What she does know is coffee, and that she  _ has  _ coffee, and that she went through all this trouble to make that coffee so she ought to drink it because otherwise she would have just embarrassed herself several times over for nothing. So she takes a sip from her mug and promptly embarasses herself yet again because it’s still just a bit (just  _ barely _ ) too hot and it  _ hurts. _

“Why are you up then?” Kiyoko asks, nice and civil, her voice soft and sweet as always. “Other than to drink coffee at two in the morning, of course.”

“Of course,” Yui parrots, as it’s not in her nature to be nice or civil or conversational, no matter how hopeless a crush she may have. “I’ve been doing homework. I’ve got an essay that isn’t going to write itself, even if it’s a terrible essay and really fucking  _ should _ .”

She chances another sip from her mug which is apparently no longer out to get her because the coffee is cool enough to gulp now. Kiyoko looks equal parts amused and disapproving- whether at her procrastination or the way she’s chugging her drink, Yui doesn’t know.

“Is it an essay due tomorrow?” Kiyoko asks, some of that quiet humor she prefers seeping into her voice. Yui’s glad at least one of them is having fun. 

“It’s an essay due tomorrow,” Yui announces grandly. She makes a sweeping motion with her mug that ends back at her mouth for yet another drink. “I’ve only got like a couple thousand words to go. A few pages. Whatever, something like that, but either way I’m _so_ close to being done.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Kiyoko says. Her tea is done, and she’s avoiding eye contact and making a valiant effort (that’s not much of an effort at all- Yui is seeing  _ right  _ through her) at trying not to laugh. 

“Oh don’t give me that look,” Yui snorts. “I really am close. So close that I could probably finish it tomorrow morning if I wanted to.”

And  _ there’s  _ an idea.

“Absolutely not,” Kiyoko interjects, an imperceptible twitch of her mouth the only warning she gives before all that laughter comes spilling out in quiet giggles and snorts that leave Yui lightheaded. “Remember that econ project that you could  _ absolutely finish tomorrow morning if you wanted to?  _ You’re my best friend Yui, but that was a  _ disaster _ .”   
  


“ _ Hey _ !” Yui yelps, because they  _ don’t talk about the econ project _ . But Kiyoko spent all three of her years in high school learning how to control a bunch of rowdy teenage boys and is well-versed in pushing buttons until she gets what she wants as a result, and apparently what she wants right now is for Yui to be something approaching responsible. On one hand- rude _.  _ On the other Kiyoko’s got a point so Yui will succumb just this once. Just this once.

“The econ project wasn’t  _ that  _ bad,” she grumbles, which is a lie, but she’s not going to give in without getting to be at least a little petulant first. “But maybe putting that essay off until tomorrow isn’t the best idea.”

“I’m glad you came around,” Kiyoko says, eyebrows raised and features arranged into a very careful faux-casual mask. Yui appreciates her commitment, if nothing else.

“Glad that I saw reason?” she asks wryly, raising her eyebrows. “That I saw it your way?”

“My way makes sense,” Kiyoko replies, taking a prim and proper sip from her tea. She looks at Yui from the corner of her eye and then they both burst out laughing again, Kiyoko with her quiet giggling and Yui with her loud and inelegant belly laughs, and it’s one of those moments that feels tangible, like she could hold it in her hands or breathe it in or wear it around her neck as the world’s most sentimental scarf. It’s one of those moments that she’d live in forever if she had her way, right up until the rest of the world fell away entirely and that was that and that was done. But homework waits for no one, no matter how achingly sappy they’re feeling, and god she’s got  _ homework.  _ She’s  _ busy.  _ She’s  _ active. _

In other words: there’s no time to be hopelessly in love and useless because of it. She’s got shit to do. 

“Well, it is _yours_. Of course it does,” Yui huffs, and she thinks that she does a very good job of making that sound casual and banter-y and not at all like the high from this successful conversation is going to be the thing that carries her through the last few bits of her essay. Her professor isn’t going to know what hit him.

“That’s nice of you,” Kiyoko giggles. She blows lightly on her tea, hands curled around the mug. “And since you’re being so nice, how about this- you get your essay done in an hour and I’ll proofread it for you before I go back to sleep.”

Not to be dramatic or anything, but Yui thinks she may have just fallen in love. From the look on Kiyoko’s face, a small smirk that’s just sweet enough to pass as a smile, she knows it too; she’s pushing those buttons, one right after the other and easy as can be, and Yui’s just sitting there and  _ letting _ her. Or rather she’s perking up, slamming her coffee to the counter and making a clumsy attempt at standing upright because Kiyoko’s essay-writing skills are  _ legendary _ and she’s  _ excited,  _ but the point still stands; Kiyoko has been coaxing her towards something this whole entire time, and Yui’s been falling for it like the lovestruck idiot she is.

“Would you?” she gasps, because if Kiyoko’s master plan includes them spending time together  _ and  _ her essay getting proofread then Yui will gladly let her pull all the strings she’d like. “Kiyoko, I’d die without you. I’d just up and fucking  _ die,  _ but now I’m gonna have the best essay ever and I’m going to live for a hundred years because of it.”

Kiyoko’s smirk becomes a little less sweet, a little more proud. She’s won and she  _ knows  _ it and she knows that Yui knows it, and Yui is so completely enamored with her that she can barely string two words together.

“Sounds like a plan,” Kiyoko says. “A good one, too.” She knocks her hip into Yui’s in a soft bit of casual contact, the sort that she’s only picked up recently and that make Yui want to do something astoundingly stupid like kiss her or ask her out or see if she’d like to purchase a small series of plants together. 

“Because it’s mostly yours?” she asks dryly, tilting her head. A joke like that puts this conversation firmly into the  _ safe and normal  _ category, which is good because that won’t scare Kiyoko off and the plants and the hypothetical date can wait (no matter what the odd squishy feeling in her chest is trying to tell her) but that essay’s due  _ tomorrow.  _

Kiyoko laughs. “Because it’s mostly mine,” she says.

She has not stopped smiling once, and that will be a point of pride for Yui up until her death on her hundredth birthday. She’s high on the feeling of it, on the way that it makes her tongue go numb and her limbs feel like rubber and the buzz of caffeine in her head (like a hive or a power saw) that much stronger, and she’d like to blame that rush for her next move because it’s  _ stupid  _ and  _ embarrassing _ : she holds her mug up high and gives an exaggerated, swooping bow, looking ridiculous all the while. But she started the bit so now she has to commit, so next she holds out an elbow that’s crooked nice and dramatic like in the movies and then cocks her hip out to the side and puts on her best rich old person impression.

“Shall we then?” she says. 

Kiyoko ducks her head, all fond exasperation and affection that knocks the wind straight from Yui’s lungs. Then she hooks her arm through Yui’s own, and they stand shoulder to shoulder, sending a little thrill up her spine, and between that and the shitty coffee and the kitchen that’s giving off the same general vibe as a gas station at night, Yui’s not sure that she’s not dreaming. 

“We shall,” Kiyoko says. And she smiles, and she takes a sip of her tea, and then she walks with Yui arm-in-arm from the kitchen, through the staticky, pristine common room, and down the hall to Yui’s room. 

The whole thing is very surreal. The next morning is even  _ more  _ surreal because Yui wakes up with Kiyoko next to her, her roommate leaving the room with a very unsubtle wink, and a fully written, completely edited essay blinking back at her from a still open computer. Stranger than that is the grade she gets: a big, bold eighty-six that stares up at her and remains impassive even in the face of her disbelief.

But the most unbelievable thing of all happens only a month later, because by then she has a girlfriend, and that girlfriend is Kiyoko. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Please consider leaving a comment if you enjoyed!! I love hearing from you guys!!


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